Mad for Carolina

It’s a fine line, the difference between passionate fan and scary insane person. When you first meet Greg Cauley, you’re not sure which one you’re getting. Especially when the guy tells you he cares about the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Tar Heels so much he considers the school’s teams his betrothed.

Greg Cauley is 58 years old and he’s been to every Carolina home football game since 1974. He’s been to every home basketball game since 1985.During that football streak, he’s only missed one road game, and that was because the Tar Heels football team played in Maryland at the same time as the basketball team played a home game. He’s traveled to 30 states to see the Tar Heels play. He has the ticket stubs to prove it, stuffed into an overflowing Saucony shoebox. He has a banner signed by every single Tar Heel basketball player and coach since 1975. Dean Smith. Michael Jordan. Tyler Hansbrough. They’re all there. He’s recorded every game on TV since 1982. The Carolina basketball powers-that-be know him so well that in February, for his 500th basketball game in the Smith Center, against Virginia, the ushers delivered a custom-made "500" cookie cake right to his seat. In his backyard stands a 3/4th-scale replica of the Victory Well on UNC’s campus.

But Cauley’s not who you might expect. A First Citizens Bank branch manager, he doesn’t even live in Chapel Hill, but rather, five miles outside a tiny town called Kinston, down a country highway called Vine Swamp Road. A humble one-story house sits on two acres. What looks like an endless strip of farmland borders his property to the north, and to the east two dozen cattle graze. A neighbor two houses down lives in an actual log cabin. All this, more than two hours from Tobacco Road.

"I just don’t know how he does it," says Tommy Howard, one of Cauley’s oldest friends. "It’s just so way over the top, over and beyond. I know most of us sports fans are a little crazy, but Greg is just….he’s Greg."

I meet Cauley in Kinston last Thursday. A sky-blue flag bearing the NC logo flies on a fifty-foot pole in his front yard beside an American flag and the state flag of North Carolina. There’s another one in the backyard, and on top of the pole is a cast-iron Ramses weathervane. There’s also a Winged Victory sculpture in the corner of the yard near the road, facing the Victory Well. Behind the well is another sculpture, St. Michael Slaying The Devil.

"I try not to go so far as to say that’s about Carolina-Duke," Cauley says, then grins. "But that is a devil."

In the driveway sits Cauley’s new car, a white 2012 Ford Taurus SHO EcoBoost edition that he got in August. He’s already put 12,000 miles on it. It’s covered in at least twenty magnets, most which he handmade, ready for tomorrow’s drive to Greensboro for Carolina’s first games in the NCAA tournament. A two-foot Ramses ram logo goes is affid to the hood. On the dashboard rides Wax Ramses, a little ram-shaped candle Cauley got in 1972 that’s ridden on his dash to every game.

Oh, and Cauley names his cars after space shuttles. This one: Atlantis.

"Why?" I ask.

He laughs. "Why do I do anything that I do?"

"You tell me."

"Oh, I don’t know," he says. "Just because it’s fun. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? You’re supposed to do what suits your passion. You’re supposed to do what you care about."

Cauley cares so much even some Carolina fans have turned on him. But that’s just….he’s Greg.

When Cauley built the Victory Well replica in 2003, he hosted an unveiling barbecue—Carolina fans only—that turned out more than 100 people. He dedicated the structure to his parents, Rena and Jim. He got a plaque and everything. The barbecue has since become an annual tradition, now drawing more than 150 visitors from states away. "You could say I have an extended Carolina family," he says.

The Victory Well replica attracted the local media, which then attracted the trolls. Cauley was accosted online and sometimes even by phone—always anonymously. He was called a momma’s boy, an attention whore, a freak, a weirdo. Cauley’s response was, as usual, a headshake of disbelief and a laugh.

"I’d never tarnish all this by doing it for attention," he says.

The day I called him to start researching this piece, he thought he was getting pranked. It’s happened before. On the surface, he’s an easy target. The house is the same one he’s lived in since high school. He’s not married. Has no children. Lives with his mother.

"You could probably say I’m married to Carolina," he says. "That’s just what I’ve planned my life around. I never considered trying to find anybody who would let me do this."

As for the insults, Cauley shrugs them off, too. "They just don’t know what they’re talking about."

It started when he was a kid. His parents and sisters were all Carolina fans, they’d watch every game together on television. Cauley wanted to go to the local high schools’ basketball games but his parents wouldn’t take him. Not until he was 10, when his dad, Jim, began teaching carpentry at South Lenoir High School. Dad took him to a game. Big game. Packed gym. In childlike wonder, Cauley lost himself, thinking the simplest thought over and over: Dude, it’s a basketball game. His dad’s cheers, the game, the electricity crackling through the crowd—like so many kids, it got Cauley high.

In a few years he made the freshman team but soon realized he was terrible, so to stay around the game he kept stats. While Cauley was in high school his father literally built their house with his own two hands. Cauley and his two sisters helped. It took a long time. To this day, the house still stands strong. For college, Cauley enrolled at the UNC-Chapel Hill, where he attended every game possible. When he graduated in 1976 he got into banking. He worked in Clinton, N.C. for a few years, then took a job back home in Kinston. He only grew more obsessed with Carolina sports. All of them. He went to baseball games, lacrosse games, soccer games. "If they had a tiddlywinks team," he says, "I’d go watch that, too."

That house he built with his father is the one he lives in now with Rena. Today, Cauley owns it and has no plans to leave. He likes that he helped build it.

"He’s got a pretty fierce loyal streak in him," his mom says.

And that explains much of why Cauley lives where he does. He became the man of the family in 1986. That’s when Dad died of brain cancer. With his sisters married and moved away, Cauley took it on himself to tend to his mother.

"Your parents, they enable you to be what you are and do what you do and, you know, live," Cauley says. "I got a good life here. I have a great job going, I like the people and I like the area. It just suits me. So I figure, least I can do is stick around and take care of Mom."

One thing about his dad’s funeral: they originally planned it for one time, before realizing it conflicted with a Caroline-Maryland home game. They rescheduled. Carolina’s basketball office sent flowers and gave Cauley extra tickets to the next game. After the funeral, Cauley took his mom along with his sisters and their husbands.

Cauley used to take Rena with him a lot more than he does now. She doesn’t like to travel as much as she used to, and diehard sports fans are getting obscene anyhow. Some diehards are obsessed in a way that makes sports better, like Clipper Darrell, the Los Angeles Clippers superfan who dances with cheerleaders, or the late Freddy Schuman, better known as "Freddy Sez" who rallied New York Yankees fans with homemade signs and by banging a frying pan.

Then there are the lunatics. Alabama football fan Harvey Updyke was charged with poisoning the iconic Toomer’s Corner oak trees, a huge piece of Auburn tradition. Following a baseball game last spring, some Los Angeles Dodgers fans beat San Francisco Giants fan Brian Stow into a coma.

While Cauley has neither witnessed nor experienced anything that awful, he has been cussed out, spit on, and threatened. He’s returned to his car to find it vandalized, opposing teams’ names scratched into the paint or nails positioned just so that if he were to roll forward or backward he’d pop a tire. The way some people act baffles Cauley. He vividly remembers the last time he spoke to someone the way he hears most sports fans speak today. He was in high school. He felt that his team got robbed by some bad calls, and in a moment of rage he called the referees words he made me swear I wouldn’t write here—a less polite rendition of, "My heavens, you’re extremely below average, you gentlemen who sleep with women who get paid for such things!"

"It just came out of nowhere," he says. "I felt like I should go wash my own mouth out with soap. I’d just lost perspective. There’s never any reason to speak to someone like that. There’s no reason to ever disrespect someone like that."

He worries that American sports fans may one day become like those in Europe, like soccer fans who riot or basketball fans who throw so much junk at players that teams have to install cages around the court.

"It’s just the disintegration of a society when you see that," he says. "Human beings don’t act like that. That’s people becoming more like wild animals. They get so passionate they lose perspective. People forget—this is just entertainment. I love this stuff, and I know some things I do are pretty out there, but some people just take it way too far. I’m like, ’Dude, it’s a basketball game.’"

Whatever abuse he takes, the games provide his fix. "It got to where I didn’t feel right missing a game," Cauley says. "And now it’s gotten to where I just can’t fathom it. That doesn’t even seem like a real thing that could happen."

Whether football or basketball, Cauley always wears his headset. he claps really loud and he yells a lot, too. It is to him what a workout or sex is to others, de-stressing, clearing his mind.

Cauley plans work around the fix, getting ahead and coordinating so that for 7 p.m. games he can leave around 1 or 2 p.m. "I’d rather sit in the gym for an hour than sit in traffic for an hour," he says. When games start at 9 p.m., he doesn’t have to leave work early, but that means he gets home around 3 or 4 the next morning, giving just enough time for a nap before rising for work at 6:30 and hitting Bojangles—a Southern-style fast food chain enormously popular in North Carolina—for breakfast.

The cost is substantial. He’s jilted friends by telling them if they want him to make it to a wedding or funeral to make sure it’s not during a game. Football season tickets are $315 a year. Basketball, $650. Rams club dues, to stay eligible for season tickets, are an additional $1,000. Between cheap fast food, a tank of gas, food and drink at the games, a game day’s total cost including the ticket runs $200. There were seven home football games and 18 home basketball games. That alone amounts to approximately $5,000 a year, not including postseason trips to bowl games—not that Carolina needs to worry about that next season—and NCAA tournament games. The drive from Kinston to Chapel Hill and back is no easy highway shot, demanding a trip through speed trap-riddled Raleigh. But Cauley keeps getting in the car. Lots of people don’t understand Cauley. He doesn’t understand them either.

"I see people at these games that don’t make sense," he says. "Like, ladies that just go with their husbands and bring a book and sit down and read the whole time. Or balance a checkbook. I’m like, ’What are you doing?’"

Every road game he can’t attend, Cauley watches on TV. Contrary to his at-the-game persona, at home he’s no more nuts than you or me, but still totally just…Greg. During the telecast, his legs must always be crossed. The top leg must be crossed in the direction of Carolina’s basket. He always has a Carolina mug full of sweet tea, and the Tar Heels logo must always face the TV screen. The game is always on Record.

The 16-by-12-foot room, a converted car port, overflows with memorabilia, things like a 1929 football program (the biggest players were 200 pounds), old UNC yearbooks, all those VHS tapes and DVDs, even a 4-by-8-foot rectangle of basketball court from Carolina’s old Carmichael Gym.

As for the television, it’s one of those bulky, boxy things, a 1995 RCA 52-inch monster.

"I’ll keep it ’til it dies," he says proudly.

Like any good disciple, Cauley shares the faith. He’s become a regional redistributor, taking the tickets his season-ticket-holding section buddies won’t be using them and finding homes for them. He never resells for profit. "It’s not about money," he says. "Nobody should make it about the money. If you’re going to sell it, fine. Just sell it at face value and give someone a chance to see a game who might not otherwise get to. I just want someone who maybe couldn’t have a chance to experience a Carolina game to get that opportunity."

One time, he sold a ticket to an acquaintance who turned around and sold it for $400.

"I wasn’t ugly to him or anything," Cauley says, "but he’ll never get another ticket from me."

Cauley even turned down a youth minister. The minister asked for tickets, Cauley said sure, minister said thanks, his buddy’s a huge State fan and has long wanted to see State play Carolina in the Dean Dome. Cauley promptly rescinded the offer. "Keep it in the family," he told him.

The minister didn’t much care for that.

So sometimes when he’s denying people tickets, or refusing to invite non-Carolina fans to his cookouts, Greg Cauley rubs people the wrong way. "His thought is, ’Why let someone in our house who’s supporting the other guys?’" says Howard. "Some people really don’t like that, but he’s fair about it. And you know, the truth is, he’s one of the nicest guys you could meet."

Kay Thomas, who worked as the Carolina basketball offices secretary for 32 years and proved instrumental in helping Cauley secure all those signatures on that banner year after year, says he was "like a breath of fresh air every year." She gets drowned in autograph requests. Some fans are pushy. Some call everyday to check on their stuff. Cauley was always the opposite, she says, so gracious that Thomas would call him if it took her longer than she expected. He never complained.

Cauley missed the first half of Carolina’s loss at Florida State this season because he had to attend a friend’s brother’s funeral. Considering that’s the first time he’s missed that much of a game in four decades and that his beloved Heels played so terribly, that’ll probably be the last minute he ever misses. He’s had friends and family reschedule weddings just so he can be there. He’s lost friends, sure, but he’s made plenty more.

A longtime friend named Brian Smith’s uncle died a few months ago. Cauley and his mother went to the funeral. Brian, who is 35 and has known the Cauleys since he was in kindergarten, got to talking with Rena about the next day’s Carolina-Duke showdown in Chapel Hill. Brian mentioned in passing, "Oh, man, that’s on my bucket list, to see a Carolina-Duke game in the Smith Center."

When Cauley got home, he changed into his sweats and a T-shirt, then checked his messages. He had a voicemail from a friend who had an extra ticket. Cauley called her back, told her he’d take it. Then he put his suit back on and went back to the church and found Brian. Brian loved every second. Except for the part where Duke’s Austin Rivers hit that three at the buzzer to win.

Same as he didn’t build the Victory Well for attention, Cauley’s streaks really aren’t about The Streak. He couldn’t build his life around a statistic.

"At some point, early on, I reached this understanding, I guess," he says. "You only have so many games you’ll be able to attend. There’s a finite number in your lifetime you can go to. And this is something I just really enjoy and I want to make sure I don’t miss any opportunities. I’m not going to keep any kind of streaks alive. I’m going, really, just for the excitement. For that high."

And that’s enough to make up for not having a wife or kids?

"It just never interested me all that much," he says.

There’s never even been one girl. "I was a geek in high school," he says. "Big Star Trek fan. And then once I got into this routine later in life, I just had no interest in trying to find someone who might mess it up. Besides, it gets way more expensive, bringing other people to these games all the time."

As obsessed as he gets, when Cauley gets a chance to meet one of the Carolina players or coaches he remains remarkably even. A couple months ago he happened to be on the Dean Dome court, getting his picture taken for a travel magazine article, and at the end of the shoot, the players came out for practice, including Kinston native Reggie Bullock. Cauley watched for a minute, taking Bullock in up close, in what he describes as "the gladiators’ arena," but then he left. "Didn’t want to interrupt them," he says.

He’s met Dean Smith, Phil Ford, Eric Montross, and others at Rams Club meetings and basketball banquets and such. He’s shook their hand, talked for a few minutes, told them thank you. And that’s it.

Then we talk about Brian Smith, and then I feel bad for making Cauley relive that Rivers shot—otherwise known as The Unfortunate Incident—so I suggest he put in his DVD of the Carolina-Duke game at Cameron. It takes him ten seconds to find it, third DVD from the top of a stack of about 50.

"Oh yeah," he says, smiling as Carolina goes up 20-5. "This is good."

Before I leave, Cauley urges me to try some banana pudding—Rena’s just made it. I ask him what he thinks it’ll take to end the streak. He doesn’t hesitate. "I don’t think the streak will die until I do. I just can’t imagine missing a game."

Cauley talks about the high, but there’s got to be more to this kind of devotion. Right?

Cauley just shakes his head. "I really don’t know," he says. "I’ve been thinking about that because you keep asking, and I guess I’d have to get on a couch with a therapist or something to figure it out. But then they’d probably get into stuff like whether I hate my parents, or try to find something I was deprived of as a child, or maybe connect it to losing something at some point. But it’s nothing like that. I’ve always had everything I needed. It’s just my thing. So I guess that’s the best explanation I can give you—that it’s inexplicable."

Over the weekend, some non-Carolina fans started mocking Cauley in Greensboro when he began protesting calls during Sunday’s game against Creighton. He saw some Carolina fans looking at him sideways and laughing. He doesn’t care. Not even on the rare occasions that one of Carolina’s own—one of his own family—turns on him. He recalls one game where, as always, he had his headset on as he stood on his feet clapping and hollering, far gone into his escape, he felt something hard hit him in the back. Then again in the shoulder. Then his head. Ice cubes from a concession stand soda.

He turned, saw a well-dressed gentleman giving him the stink eye and yelling.

Cauley didn’t fire back with a "Don’t you know I’ve been coming here for three decades?" or call for an usher or even so much as raise his voice. He shot the guy a glare and smirked and shook his head. As he tugged his headset back on, he just said one thing.

"Dude, it’s a basketball game!"

Brandon Sneed is the author of The Edge of Legend, an acclaimed chronicle of Barton College’s run to the 2007 Division II national basketball championship and how the team’s hero, Anthony Atkinson now of the Harlem Globetrotters, pulled off a miracle. Follow Brandon on Twitter.

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